ppi Valley were
represented at the conference held May 26-27 in the Planters Hotel, St.
Louis. The objects of the new body were announced in the constitution,
as:

_First_: To foster and promote a feeling of fellowship and good
will among its members, and on broad and equitable lines to advance
the welfare of the coffee trade and the consumer.

_Second_: To eliminate or minimize abuses, methods and practises
inimical to the proper conduct of business.

_Third_: To assist in the enactment and enforcement of uniform pure
food laws which in their operations shall deal justly and equitably
with the rights of the consumer and the trade.

The association started with these officers: Julius J. Schotten, St.
Louis, President; M.H. Gasser, Toledo, vice-president; W.E. Tone, Des
Moines, treasurer, and W.J.H. Bown, St. Louis, secretary.

Meanwhile, as a result of an agitation started by _The Tea and Coffee
Trade Journal_, a meeting of New York and eastern coffee roasters was
called at the Fulton Club, New York, October 27, 1911, to discuss plans
for a national organization. M. H. Gasser attended this meeting, and
told of the plan of the western roasters to organize such an
organization at a meeting called for Chicago the following month. The
promoters of the eastern organization subsequently abandoned their
efforts in favor of the western group.

[Illustration: ROBERT MEYER, ST. LOUIS

First president of the Coffee Roasters' original organization]

At the first convention of the National Coffee Roasters Traffic and Pure
Food Association, held in Chicago, November 16-17, 1911, all the
foregoing officers were retained, the office of second vice-president
was created, and Frank R. Seelye was selected to fill it.

That the organization idea was popular among the roasters was evident
from the fact that at the close of the convention it was announced that
the membership was then seventy-one firms in cities as far east as
Virginia and as far west as Kansas City. The convention demonstrated
that the association was really a national organization, which quieted
suspicions prevalent in some quarters of the trade in the east that it
was chiefly a Mississippi Valley unit.

The first convention is remembered principally because of Hermann
Sielcken's defense of the Brazil coffee valorization plan, which was
then the big question of the coffee trade. The titles of some of the
other addresses wi